The Starbucks Part 11

"Why, dinner's about ready to take up, and them folks ain't come back.

Why, I never did see Lou as skittish as she is now. I reckon it's because he's the son of a United States jedge."

"Oh, you've found out all about him, have you? Wall, he's sorter skittish, too. And when his aunt talks it puts me in mind of a bird a singin' up summers among the green leaves."

"Oh, any woman could talk thatter way if you'd put fine clothes on her.

Trouble is when a woman ain't dressed fitten to kill, n.o.body won't listen to her. Common calico can't talk any better than that Mose Blake; but silk--law me! Sings like a bird up among the green leaves. I despise to hear a man go on thatter way--jest as if a woman ain't respectable unless she covers herself with finery. But I want to tell you that Lou can talk with the rest of 'em when she wants to--and so can I, for that matter."

"Oh, you can talk, Margaret--thar ain't no doubt about that. Well, I'll go out now and see if the hogs air gittin' along all right, and when dinner's ready jest blow yo' ho'n."

Off from the road, not far from the house, a gulch ran zig-zag up among the rugged hills. It was no mere ragged and unsightly drain for water from the higher land. Flower-brightened and vine-hung, it was deliciously cool, and gorgeous at every turn. At the bottom babbled a rivulet, a bit of summer sky melted and poured among the green-tipped rocks. Blooming shrubs in the giant's garden, the saplings seemed; and hither came the birds to make their nests and to nod with half-shut eyes in the drowsy afternoon. But after pa.s.sing through this elbow corridor, there were bare rocks, standing bold in the sun or bleak in the wind, and here was a log hut almost hidden by bushes. It was called the mill, and corn was ground there, but the meal was boiled in a great iron kettle. It was Old Jasper's distillery. After leaving the house he went up to this place, and in front of his picturesque though illegitimate establishment, he sat down upon a stone to muse over his coming danger.

In Jasper Starbuck there was a force which, directed by education, would have made of him a leader of men. Once a neighbor had threatened to report him to the government, and in the night Jasper went to the house of his enemy, called him to the door, showed him a rope, and without saying a word went away. The neighbor knew what the rope meant. Years before a miscreant who had a.s.saulted a woman, was seized by Starbuck, thrown upon his back, tied hand and foot, and hanged to a tree; and it was only the timely arrival of officers of the law that saved him for the deliberations of the established gallows. But with all his quickness to act he was sometimes made slow by a touch of sentiment, and thus it was that he permitted Peters to bully him. Between the two families there had ever existed bad blood, and some of it had been spilled. In the neighborhood it was a standing prediction that Jasper would one day cut the throat of the bl.u.s.tering Lije, and the old fellow, especially as time began to whiten his hair, constantly mused to himself: "I don't want 'em to throw it up to my girl that she is the daughter of a butcher, but if the time must come--" Here he always broke off, summoning his humor with the whistle of a droll tune. "Thar may be some way to weather it out," he now mused as he sat upon the stone, "I have been in many a close place and I always weathered it out."

Suddenly he looked up, attracted by the bleating of a lamb; and up higher among the crags he went, found the little thing caught between two rocks, almost starved. "You don't belong to me," he said, taking the lamb in his arms, "but yo' life belongs to you an' in the sight o' the Lord mebby it amounts to as much as mine." He took the lamb down to the house, gave it milk, and then took it back upon the hill-side, and, putting it on the ground, said: "Thar, I reckon you'd better run along home. Yo' mammy mout be distressed about you."

Upon returning to the house he found that his visitors had come back from the post-office. Jim was gazing at Mrs. Mayfield, Tom was shyly striving to dispel Lou's shyness, Mrs. Mayfield was talking romance.

"Oh, I could not have believed that such a place existed," she said to Starbuck. "I was warned not to come here, that the people were ungentle and that the report of the gun was oftener heard than the strains of the song; but I find that your life here is almost uneventful music."

"I don't know what sort of music that is, ma'm, but if you say so, I'd be willin' to bet on it. Wouldn't you, Jim?"

"I don't bet, Uncle Jasper,--but--but if she wanted me to I would."

"Of course you would, or any other preacher, if he's a man."

Mrs. Mayfield was looking at Jim and he sat illumined beneath her gaze.

"Your compliments are all so new and strange to me," she said. "And in them I can find no flattery."

"Ma'm, I have never tried to flatter any one. Judas was a flatterer."

"That's right, ma'm," the old man declared, laughing and slapping his leg; "an' I'd ruther a man would tell me a flat-footed lie than to pour mola.s.ses on me. Young feller," he asked of Tom, "did you like yo'

ride?"

"Charmed with it, I a.s.sure you. Auntie called it a continuous panorama."

"Wall, I never thought about it in that way, but I reckon that's about what it is."

"Oh, such visions are not to be forgotten," Mrs. Mayfield spoke up, and at the sound of her voice Jim dodged. "And such air, Mr.

Starbuck--ethereal liquor of the G.o.ds."

At the word liquor Jasper's jaw dropped with a "hah?"

"Yes," she said, "wine from the press of Paradise. How free from the taint of the world was every shrub and flower! I thought that a poet had laid him down and dreamed, and awaking and stealing away, had left his dream behind."

"That so? And right up on the hill from whar you crossed the river thar lives the old feller they tell the tale about. Many years ago when thar come along a gover'ment surveyor, a changein' the line between North Caroliny an' Tennessee, he dragged his chain through the old feller's house, putting one room in one state an' lettin' the other room stay in the state it was. 'Wall,' says the old feller, beginnin' to move his bed over into the tuther room, 'reckon I'll sleep over here as North Caroliny ain't very healthy nohow,' an' he did till years atterwards another chain proved that he was mo' than fifty miles over in Tennessee an' then his health improved might'ly. I'm glad you like our part o' the country, ma'm."

"Anyone to know the dark side of life as I do, Mr. Starbuck, must revel here. There are no sneers among the trees, and the tears that fall from the flowers are tears of joy and not of sorrow. It does not seem that the great explorer, Trouble, has ever penetrated this region."

"Ma'm," said the old man, standing in front of her with his hands behind him, "no matter whar we go trouble is thar jest in advance of us.

Trouble was in the garden of Eden, waitin' for man. The coward may say that it come with the woman, but it was thar in the shape of a snake befo' man trod the path. A house may be away off among the hills; it may be kivered all over with vines an' the flowers may sweeten the roof, and yit inside thar may be a heart that is a smotherin'."

"It is mighty warm in here," said Margaret, entering the room. "Come to dinner."

Jim, in a constant tremble, as if he expected some dire accident to befall him, sat beside Mrs. Mayfield. Once he dropped a dish, and later leaning back in his chair, the hind legs of which were too short, tipped over and came near upsetting the table. Tom and Lou t.i.ttered; Jasper roared till the tears ran down his brown cheeks; Margaret reproved him and all was in confusion till Mrs. Mayfield's gentle words pattered musically among them like rain in the dust. She did not take notice of the ludicrous mishap, and when Jim had scrambled to his feet and was standing there ridiculous with a dry grin, she said to him: "I know you must be fond of books, and when I return home I will send you some--books that I have read and marked when the hours were long."

The preacher recovered himself. "Ma'm," said he, "in a book yo' pencil would make a high price mark, and from one man that I know of there could be no purchase."

"I gad," snorted Old Jasper, "dinged if he didn't git right up and stand higher than he was befo'."

"Jasper," Margaret protested, "I wouldn't make fun of the way a man stands. It don't sound right."

"My dear," Mrs. Mayfield replied to Margaret, motherly, though young, "he paid Mr. Reverend a pretty compliment."

"Now did he?" Margaret rejoined. "Wall, if he did I'm mighty glad of it, but the truth is, Miz Mayfield, Jasper is so full of his pranks you never can tell how to take him. Lou, why don't you pa.s.s the b.u.t.ter to Mr. Elliott; and the bread? Can't you see nothin' at all? I hope you will excuse her, Mr. Elliott, fur she sometimes furgits though she did go to school for two years over at Dry Fork."

Tom begged her not to worry about him. He was nearing that stage when physical appet.i.te is forgotten, when our entire nature, faults, virtues, all littlenesses and greater qualities, are thrown into a heap to feed the bonfire of love. An old man may love like a fool, but the boy loves like a hero. The old man who believes that he is loved by a girl is a reveler in the debauchery of his own vanity. With an egotism unknown to youth, he believes. The "sweet thing" tells him with an air of wisdom that she could not love youth, that it is but an animated folly, and he believes her. But the boy is uncertain and doubts himself. His love, instead of inspiring confidence within his own breast, inhabits his heart with the ghost of fear. The old man talks plat.i.tudes and knows that he is convincing. The boy stammers his devotion and feels that he has failed.

"You ain't eatin' a thing," said Lou, and this bold boy in the city, but timid now, dropped a piece of bread, burnt himself with coffee and spluttered that never in all his life had he eaten so much. A bird lighted on the window sill, and whispering to Lou, he said that it had come to hear her talk, and to carry her music to the other birds to make them envious; and she spoke no word, but her cheeks replied to him. The old man was musing and saw nothing, but Margaret heard the words and saw the blush, and sitting back in her chair she compressed her lips and fanned herself in satisfied determination. Jim had become calm, though watchful and still on the dodge. Sometimes he started as if a bold thought with a sudden knock upon the prison door demanded liberation, but frightened at the sound of the struggling voice within he would seem to clap his hand over the key-hole, that no accent might escape.

The old man was aware of these trials and they amused him and often he would duck his head and laugh over his plate. Margaret would clear her throat at him.

"Now, Jasper, what on top of yeth has tickled you so? A body to see you would think that thar wan't nuthin' serious nowhar. Oh, I like to see a man enjoy hisse'f, but--"

"But you don't," Jasper filled in, winking at Jim, who dodged as if an acorn had been flipped at his eye. "Ma'm," he added, "blamed if I believe a woman ever has a right good laugh after she's past thirty.

About that time nature turns down the lamp for her and she begins to see shadows. If she does laugh much atter this it is at an enemy. She won't laugh with you--she laughs at you. You've got to look funny to her--you've got to have on suthin' that looks odd."

"Oh, I don't think so, Mr. Starbuck," Mrs. Mayfield replied. "It has often been denied, but a woman has the true sense of humor, but--"

"Humor!" exclaimed the old fellow. "Why, she's got mo' than a day in April."

"You misunderstand me. I mean that she has a true sense of fun. Being more sensitive than man, some things that a man wouldn't notice, strike her as ridiculous. To say that she has no fun would be to rob her of sorrow, for the keenest sorrow comes after we have had our fun."

"Ma'm, you air settin' in a boat, paddlin' at ease and I am a rollin' up my britches higher an' higher, a tryin' to wade atter you; but you air a gittin' out whar it is too deep fur me to foller you."

"A compliment charmingly expressed, Mr. Starbuck. But if I row away from you, it was you who placed me in the boat."

"Ma'm, I allus thought it would be hard to talk to an educated woman. I 'lowed she would talk a finery that I couldn't understand, but you sorter make me change my mind."

"Jasper, you do fret a body so," Margaret put in. "You would lead us to think you never met a woman befo'. Why, thar air lots o' women up here--can't talk silk and braid and plush, but they know how to say what they mean."

Mrs. Mayfield bowed to her. "I quite agree with you, Mrs. Starbuck.

Women everywhere are pretty much the same."

"So glad to hear you say that, Miz Mayfield," Margaret replied. "It ain't often that anybody agrees with me--Jasper never do. If I'd say a crow's black, he'd 'low it was white."

"Yes," drawled the old man, "ef you was to say so; but you never would say a crow was black. You'd say he was yaller. No, I don't allers dispute what you say. Tuther day when I flung a rock at a steer, it struck a tree, bounced back and hit me and you said, 'Thar, you've hurt yo'se'f,' and I didn't dispute it. Jest give me the truth and you won't here no complaint. Am I right, Jim?"

Jim did not relish his position as "prover." The umpire of household argument "hath but a losing office." In the opinion of one side or the other his decision is unjust. "You are nearly always right when you think you are, Uncle Jasper, and you don't often think you are right unless you are; and I can say the same of Aunt Margaret."